Benefits of Reading

Many people enjoy picking up a book or magazine to read as a form of entertainment or to obtain information. Reading allows us to experience worlds that others have created, to learn about new things, or to understand the thoughts and opinions of other people. It is more than just a form of entertainment though as reading is shown to provide many health benefits.

Reading is shown to increase a person’s vocabulary. Children’s books, though most would not assume, will expose 50% more words to the child than watching prime time TV and is shown to provide more words than listening to a conversation between college student graduates. This increased vocabulary from reading benefits people of all ages by teaching them to be more articulate. Whether the reading subject is fiction, non-fiction, newspapers, or well thought out articles, reading introduces new words that we can incorporate into our vocabulary. An increased vocabulary is shown to be linked with a boost in confidence and self esteem, increasing our performance ability on what we set out to accomplish. Writing skills will improve the more we read as the larger vocabulary means we have more word to utilize to convey what we want to tell. Even how the book is written will affect our writing as we will incorporate the style of writing and combine it with our own, inspiring us to develop our own unique way of writing and improving the writing quality.

Reading gives us a way to increase our knowledge and our understanding of various aspect of the world. Ever increasing knowledge means that we are better able to accomplish more things in life. It gives us the knowledge on how to accomplish many things. Our knowledge and larger vocabulary from reading provides a boost to our social interaction skills. It gives us topics and the words to use to interact with other people about many things. Research shows that companies prefer people who are well-spoken, well-read, and knowledgeable about various subjects. This means that reading will help us to get a job or increase the likelihood of promotion at our current jobs.

There are many benefits that reading provides that help us with tasks we want to complete. Just 20 minutes of reading is shown to provide a boost in concentration ability as it allows the mind to focus solely on what is being read. This concentration persists even after reading, staying with us throughout the entire day. Getting a concentrated mindset is harder now than any other time with the constant switching between social media, checking our phones, background conversation, and other things that deter our attention.

Analytical thinking skills are beneficial in solving problems that we could encounter in our daily lives. Reading is able to provide us with analytical skills by allowing the mind to piece together the story, character interaction, events, and how various topics relate to each other. Talking about books with others or discussing thoughts on the story and characters help us to analyze and understand not just the book but how other people interpret and understand different things.

Reading books, particularly fiction books, increases our ability to empathize with others. It does this by giving readers a way to know what the book’s characters are thinking and their emotional response, allowing us to understand how they personally feel. Even just reading the beginning or a chapter of a book is shown to produce a noticeable increase of empathy a week later. This increase in empathy and understanding regarding characters’ thoughts and feelings helps us with complex social relationships, creating positive social interactions. This in turn reduces stress levels and helps us live longer, healthier lives.

There are additional ways that reading reduces stress levels. Reading allows a person to clear the mind from stressful situations, enter a state of relaxation, and instead focus on the written words. Its ability to reduce stress is quite large with research showing that reading is able to reduce stress levels by as much as 68%. Reading self-help books provide their own benefits as they are shown to help people that suffer from certain mood disorders and mild mental illnesses. A person needs to be careful of what they read though, as while newspapers can tell us of various things happening, they can negatively affect the mind. It is shown that reading the newspaper will decrease our ability to empathize with others and can create stress.

Reading provides a workout for our brain, similar to how exercise provides a workout for the body, boosting its performance. This brain workout is able to increase memory function by having the brain process and remember the book’s events, characters, and other important information of the chosen reading topic. Reading is shown to prevent decline in brain function due to age, as frequent brain usage is able to reduce age-related mental decline by 32%. The frequent use of brain function helps with other complications such as in the prevention and even reverse of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. Reading is able to help in the creation of new synapses (brain pathways) and to strengthen existing ones, helping in short term memory recall and in stabilizing our moods.

The new brain pathways, or what is called cognitive reserve, helps with many complications such as stroke, dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and other brain damaging conditions. If damaged, the brain is able to utilize the reserves for ways around the damaged area. This is the reason why researchers believe that, when checking the brains of elders that had passed away, the elders had shown no outward complications or symptoms, such as memory loss or problems speaking, despite their brains having advanced signs of the neurodegenerative disease. Reading provides many of the ways to build up this reserve as high vocabulary, knowledge of foreign words, and learning new languages are the biggest factors for creating new cognitive reserves. The growing and strengthening of cognitive pathways is provided much more from books than from reading newspapers. Newspapers mostly involve just skimming the headlines while books require the memorization of previous chapters and information.

Depending on where a person lives reading can be a form of free or low-cost entertainment. A person can visit a library to choose between a huge selection of books that they can read there. A lot of older books can be found online that have entered the public domain, meaning their copyright has expired. Sometimes authors have placed their books under a public domain license themselves. It is important to be careful to make certain that these free books are legally free. This means finding a trusted and reputable source for getting them and determining their status.

Reading is a wonderful activity that provides many benefits. It increases our knowledge, vocabulary, helps us relax, reduces stress, boosts brain’s ability to function, allows our brains to grow and prevent many brain complications. All of these benefits allow us to live longer, healthier lives. With all its benefits, it’s easy to see that we should be reading, and the real question is what should we read next.